Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

schwit1 sent us an LA Times article about another step in the seemingly unending media consolidation. This time it's Cable giant Comcast Corp. looking at NBC. NBC owns a slew of channels, including Bravo, USA and Syfy (who might have the single lamest rebranding since Spike). The article says that it would be far cheaper than the Disney deal Comcast tried to pull off 5 years ago.

Big American cities, mostly built in the 30's and 40's, before cable, are built of brick and mortar.

Big Japanese cities are built of ricepaper and bamboo.

Have you compared how easy it is poking a cable through the wall in Japan to install 100Mbps vs. poking a cable through a brick? And don't EVEN compare how much easier WiMAX will pass through paper vs. steel-reinforced concrete.

People who live in glass houses don't need sun porches. People who live in paper houses don't need drills.

Well maybe some of the people. Not everyone is locked into Comcast. In fact, nobody is truly locked into Comcast. But perhaps we should start looking for an exposed ventilation shaft that leads to the core of their mothership just in case.

Actually, cable-wise you pretty much *are* locked into them if they have the cable franchise in your city and you can't use satellite (your house faces the wrong way, live in an apartment, etc.). And even on the broadband internet side, most people only have 2 or 3 options at the most. In my city, if you don't go Comcast for broadband, the only other option is AT&T DSL (which is limited to a measly 3 Mbps in this city).

You seem to have missed a subtle but quite important work in GP's post. "...nobody is TRULY locked into Comcast .." So yeah, you can argue about how they have a monopoly in certain areas and some people can't get a satellite connection, but at the end of the day, no one has to sit there watching cable television. If Comcast is the big evil monopoly in your area, and you are anti-Comcast, then just don't watch cable*. So, no. . . nobody is truly locked in.

Okay that isn't fair but I suspect if he were here, and completely honest, that's exactly what he would say. He argues that Comcast is not a monopoly and people have other choices, but he forgets the alternative (50k dialup) is not really a valid choice. You can do a lot over dialup including bittorrent, but you can't watch hulu.com or nbc.com or other tv sites. ----- Also even in areas that have both cable and DSL, that's still just a duopoly... no better than our current political system.

Given how much Comcast costs in my area, a good solution for me, if I didn't have decently price ATT uverse here, would be to use an iphone data plan (not limited to 5gb like the others) and use the sim card with a router. about 5 mbps on the new 3gs currently (slower than advertised, but really, what do you expect?). That is fast enough to stream from hulu et al.

Yes and I actually did this. I am so ANTI-COMCAST that I went 2 years with crappy ATT DSL, and NO cable TV.

And in a month I will be living on a street with 2 competing Cable providers!!!!! So I can hopefully haggle one down to about 50% normal rates and pay an acceptable amount.
And I will spout my discount as PROOF of monopolistic, and price fixing tactics on NO COMPETITION cable providers.

Every urban street in the U.S. should have this. And not just 2 providers, but maybe 4 or 5. It is only through competition that you break the back of a monopoly, plus giving choice to the consumer empowers them to run their own lives.

How do you split up a cable line or fibre lines between multiple providers? The best way is to have a shared network where it is split fairly between the providers using the line. The maintainer is payed by the providers using it. This is already done with DSL, cable is not required to do so. Problem is, the DSL owner gets an unfair edge and bandwidth over the other providers despite being required to allow others to use it (and still pay them a use fee.)

(1) You can't multitask a cable TV line because it's already full. From 10 megahertz upto 2000+ megahertz, it's filled by TV, radio, and internet service. So there's just room for ONE company - you can't multiplex the cable with others.

(2) Therefore the best solution IMHO is to just revoke Comcast's monopoly, and open the market for Cox, Time-Warner, and other companies to lay their own cable through the pipes underneath suburbs. Yes that's duplication but so what? Cables are cheap and take-up little r

Sorry, mate, but this logic does not hold up. The term monopoly refers to having exclusive control over one branch of an industry -- if Comcast has no competitors it is a monopoly, regardless of your decision to simply not watch TV.

Yeah, I pay for basic cable service even though it is not plugged into my TV. That's because I want fast internet access and Comcast has bundled them such that signing up for a cable TV service I don't use, saves me money. That is pretty much a conclusive indicator of a broken market that needs to be addressed by antitrust regulators.

Really? For me, getting just the single service Internet was at laest $20 cheaper, even with all the ridiculous lock-in specials Comcast offers. Which saved me enough for a Netflix account, which with all the TV on Hulu is all I really need for entertainment.

AT&T comes with espn360 streaming, which has formula 1, 3, and nascar racing events live and replayed on demand whenever you want. I'm a huge college football fan who used to pay for the extra package during the season, and I just got sick enough of it that I explored my options.

So stop doing it, I did. I download a lot of stuff and my connection is more reliable at actually obtaining the content on a regular basis at a consistent speed using 5 Mbps AT&T DSL than Comcast's "Comcastic" 10 Mbps cable modem.

There are multiple problems with that. First, so far AT&T has been more expensive every time I checked because they bundle their service with a home phone line, which I also don't want. Second, AT&T's connection is slower by all comparisons I've seen. Third, doing business with AT&T (my cell phone provider) is a bureaucratic hell. Even finding out if they will provide DSL to my location is an exercise in frustration. If I go to their Web page right now (just did) I fill out four different forms

BS, I pay $54 for dry loop dsl from AT&T. Once they are set up, they simply bill me. Comcast has 800 price structures for 6 month specials that I have to call and renegotiate EVERY six months. I have a flat price that is lower than Comcast's regular rate, no home phone service, and NO BS TO DEAL WITH ANYMORE.

If you put in the effort ONCE, you never have to call and threaten to cancel your service to get the "better" deal.

Which we will be taxed for at 5 times the current rate charged by the private companies. No. Thanks. At least with Comcast I can say, "Thanks for the call but I don't want your tv shit," and not pay them a dime. I can't do that with the government. (Heck they want to fine me $1500 because I don't want their health insurance.)

Also my DSL as actually reasonable - $15 a month. I have no complaints.

Which we will be taxed for at 5 times the current rate charged by the private companies.

We're ALREADY being taxed for it. We paid for the creation of their existing networks with huge government subsidies and they keep getting more of them. We're still paying interest on the loans we took out as a country to provide all that subsidy. Rather than wasting the money, we should hold them accountable to provide a public good and open up all the last mile network to other competitors.

At least with Comcast I can say, "Thanks for the call but I don't want your tv shit," and not pay them a dime.

No you can't. You're already paying them with your tax dollars.

Also my DSL as actually reasonable - $15 a month. I have no complaints.

>>>We're ALREADY being taxed for it. We paid for the creation of their existing networks

Yes but that's a once-and-done tax. I was talking about an ongoing tax that never ends, similar to SSI or Medicare, that would be used to maintain the internet cabling under the streets. I would prefer an internet system more akin to the cellphone companies, where the networks are privately held but you still have a choice of multiple providers. Competition is preferable to a government monopoly.

I would prefer an internet system more akin to the cellphone companies, where the networks are privately held but you still have a choice of multiple providers. Competition is preferable to a government monopoly.

Yeah, because cell phone coverage in the US is so great compared to other places? Also, your analogy does not exactly work, as to do that you'd need each company be able to run lines to your house. It's a engineering nightmare much worse than providing multiple towers in a locality.

Agreed but corporations don't have any control over that. It's the local cities and towns that refuse to allow competition, so petition your local or state government to lift that restriction, and you will have competition. Simple as that.

You don't think there is any reason for those local restrictions? We tried the same thing in the dawn of telephones and electrical power. You get a dozen companies running separate lines and when one pole falls over it knocks out

>>>So stop doing paying for cable, I did. I download a lot of stuff...

Which is precisely why Comcast and other cable companies have contracted with TNT, USA, FX, et cetera to move their content behind a subscriber wall. That means you'll no longer be able to watch these shows for free, unless you can provide a valid Comcast, Cox, or Time-warner subscriber number.

Hasn't happened yet. When it does, so long, I don't want to business with that type of company anyhow. There's this thing called ethics, and it doesn't go out the window when its inconvenient or not fun enough.

Not that I don't agree with you, I don't have cable, but most people are still locked in due to things like sports, others live in apartments and can't get OTA TV. Out of curiosity how do you record the OTA channels? I've been looking into doing so but most DVRs are explicitly marked as supporting QAM and don't indicate whether they have expandable HDDs or can burn to disc.

If you have a dish antenna in the front of your house in Columbia, Maryland they can fine you and harrass you into moving. There are a lot of new areas where a no-condo assocoiation has more power than one would think.

No. You need to file a complaint with the FCC. Federal regulations override everything else. If you take the HOA or anyone else to court, you'll EASILY win. The FCC has put the rules in black and white.

Yeah but you can put up a dish no matter what your apartment manager says. You can put up the biggest most unsightly satelite dish (on TV antenna) despite the most aggressive HOA. You are protected by the FEDS!

False. There's a size limit on how big the dish or antenna can be, and there's also a limit of 12(?) feet above the roofline. I have to admit I like the idea of challenging the housing association tyranny. Bunch of control freaks.

Even if you can use satellite you can still be locked to Comcast. I have DirecTV and noticed the VS channel was off the other day with the message that Comcast owns it and was trying to charge some higher rate for DTV to carry it.

you can't use satellite (your house faces the wrong way, live in an apartment, etc.).

Was M.C. Escher the architect for your house, per-chance? Every house I've ever seen happens to have 4 walls, each facing a different compass orientation. And you know, you don't really have to embed a satellite dish into your house. Once you bolt it to the building, you can aim it 360 degrees... You can do crazy stuff, like mounting it to the north side of your house, and aim it south, pointing over the roof!

We're already down to just a few companies that control virtually every media producer and distribution pipeline in the country. It's little surprise these guys oppose net neutrality. Without some sort of government imposed net neutrality, they can essentially shut out even the indie media producers from online distribution. Then they would control pretty much everything we see and hear (or, more importantly, DON'T see and hear).

What you forget is that every time these companies consolidate it is approved by all the regulating bodies of the government, whether it be the FCC or FTC.

These companies have yet to do what you've said they will do on a large scale although there is supposedly nothing stopping them. What is stopping them is their customers. People won't stand for it. If you allow the government to regulate the internet in this way it opens the door to these companies lobbying the government to change the rules in their fav

You want more precision? Fine. YES acorn was receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and they were using for good things to assist inner-city communities BUT they were also using it to advise prostitutes in D.C., Baltimore, Los Angeles, and New York how to (a) lie on tax forms to commit fraud (b) import illegal persons (c) set-up a prostitute house as a "dancing hall" and (d) prostitute 13-14 year old girls. Now maybe you think those actions are acceptable or even moral, but what matters is the

Interesting... because I saw that ACORN thing all over Fox News and CNN. Hmm... Is he watching TV in America?As for broadband infrastructure, I think it's high time the gubbermint mandates fiber to the door, and buys it from the telcos to sell on the open market. Pay someone to put lines in, pay someone a contract to manage/repair it (on 5-10y) basis, and let companies buy it from the government. Use the postal service model, perhaps?

I really don't care how it's done, but keep content separate from deliv

Not really practical. You can't run fiber to every farmhouse in the wilds of Idaho or Wyoming or Montana. However you could mandate DSL to every door, since everyone already has a phone line and therefore all you need is a DSLAM to enable the connection. That would be an instant upgrade for everyone from 50k to 1000k - about twenty time faster.

Customers can get a list of individual channels (or packages), and they decide what they desire to see.

Its not the cable companies that are stopping this, its the channel owners themselves. If a cable company wants to offer a channel, then they often are required to pick up a few other channels, and there are restrictions on what tier they can be placed on. For example, if a cable company wants to offer ESPN, then they are required to also buy ESPN2, ESPNEWS, and ESPN U. And the agreement will often have restrictions on what tier they can be placed on; i.e. ESPN2 and ESPNEWS must be on the same tier as ESPN.

99.5% of people who download will make up random numbers to justify their behavior.

I researched (read: googled) and it took awhile, but eventually found this statistic. Out of every 2500 downloads, there's the loss of one CD sale. Figure 10-11 songs per CD, so that's one lost song sale per ~200 downloads.

If you can provide a better statistic, please share it. I'm willing to listen to rational argument if they are backed by facts.

Critiques of media consolidation involve a number of issues and notions:That consolidation and globalization of media over the past decade have been massive.That media consolidation is served by government deregulation and subsidization ofthe airwaves.That media consolidation and globalization are viewed as predecessors of globalcapitalism.That the bottom line of corporate media is profit, not content.That media industries have become media oligopolies, that is, media conglomeratesare not agents of a democratic citizenry, but of a business and state elite.That critiques of globalization and corporate power are marginalized.That media audiences are treated as consumers rather than citizens.That the traditional notion of media having a public interest obligation hasdisappeared.That democratically-based media outlets have expanded and while marginalizedprovide an alternative to corporate media messages.

Fabulous, just when we have an alternative to the cable delivery system become viable. . . I am curious how much this plays into Comcast's desire for NBC. They see people making an end run around their monopoly and are implementing this plan to plug the gap.

Add to that one other word that most people seem to be leaving out of the thoughts: Hulu

Hulu was started and is still back in large part by NBC.

It is a distribution mechanism that has the potential to completely obsolete Cable Companies (except as ISPs), and buying NBC might give Comcast a stake in the company, or at least a say in the direction of the company ("Maybe we should run more adverts", "how about a three week delay and only show the last two episodes", "we really shouldn't run 'cable exclusive'

Do you really believe that the economy is on the rise? That pumping a couple of trillion dollars of debt into it has magically fixed all of the problems? We'll see a short-term improvement, perhaps, but in the long term we're just building it up to be worse than it ever would have without government "stimulus", tarp, and other such foolishness./uninformed-but-common-sense-opinion

The real answer - no we're about to experience massive devaluation of the dollar (i.e. a loss of your savings). Or the funny answer: "Yes absolutely. This I know because Obama loves me so... red, yellow, black, or white, all are equal in his sight". LINK - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVrj0fBNwzk [youtube.com]

I would say if you have any money to convert to Euros, you should do so. I have heard some comments that this is because the dollar is not based upon gold anymore. We'll the Euro isn't based upon anything other than faith. The dollar is really based upon oil as most oil payments are made this way. This is bad news for us. Also many other countries no longer have faith in the dollar and will be dumping it sooner rather than later. This has been happening since the dot com bubble and the lowering of interest

It's the fallacy that an economy can be built on information, instead of raw goods. That's what's going to do us in in the end. Information is cheap, and the rest of the world is rapidly catching up or exceeding the US in knowledge manufacture...

We'll see a short-term improvement, perhaps, but in the long term we're just building it up to be worse than it ever would have without government "stimulus", tarp, and other such foolishness.

Yes, indeed. Does everyone remember "The Second Great Depression"? You know, the one that was larger than the first? How FDR's New Deal in the 1930's was such a failure, and as a result, the economy just got worse in the 40s and 50s? Sure you do! It happened, I tell you!

When they control the content and the distribution, they lose the "the company upstream is forcing us to encrypt the channels" excuse.

Comcast currently doesn't want me as a customer, so they encrypt their channels to make sure I can't watch them and pay them money. I think it really pissed them off when I gave them money over and over again, month after month, year after year, back in the analog days when you plugged the cable into a receiver and everything "Just Worked."

Comcast only said "While we do not normally comment on [mergers and acquisitions] rumors, the report that Comcast has a deal to purchase NBC Universal is inaccurate." The inaccuracy could've been in some details of the report, or whether such a deal would actually happen, but they didn't specify which (in that quote).

PR guys love to reveal without revealing and lie without lying. A failure to do either leaves the company vulnerable.

Considering NBC Universal is a subsidiary of General Electric, one of the largest companies on the planet; my guess would be that the inaccuracy in the details of the report are that NBC is looking to buy Comcast rather than vise-versa.

Of course they denied it. If it got out that they were looking to buy NBC Universal, the stock price would rise thereby increasing the purchase price as speculators bought up stock in the hopes of a big payday when the buyout came around. That would be something they'd want to avoid.

When the deal is complete, Comcast will raise the rates to carry their newly acquired channels to DirecTV, to ridiculously insane levels, just like they did with the Versus channel... all in an effort to try putting DirecTV out of business. After the royal shafting they tried sticking those of us with their Internet service, but not their cable TV service* (which they referred to as "bundling", but which was, in reality, a "satellite tax"), I will never spend another cent with those greedy bastards. Fuck Comcast.**

*I had AT&T Broadband, and when Comcast bought them out, they decided to modify their price structure to bring it in line with the rest of the country (their words). In doing so, my bill went from $32.95/mo., to $37.95, to $42.95, and then to $57.95/mo., in the span of less than 10 months. (No promotional rates were involved, either.) The last increase of FIFTEEN dollars a month was because I didn't have cable TV. Funny that I didn't have it at the beginning, and only paid $32.95 a month to AT&T, for the exact same level of speed and service. As far as I'm concerned, Comcast is even more evil and untrustworthy as Microsoft, which is really saying something. Stay classy, Comcast!

**Come on already, Qwest - where's the FTTH that your commercials keep trying to pitch to me, but I STILL can't get, less than 5 miles from Downtown St. Paul?!?

I don't hate the idea of socialism. I just hate the results. I think we're better served by competing companies, and empowering the people with freedom of choice.

SSI - runs out of money in 2016 (according to the CBO)Medicare - samePost Office - deep deep in debtAmtrak - deep deep in debtU.S. government - deep deep in debt; had to beg the rich Chinese for cash, or else collapse.

>>>Concast screwed them over as well as me and my wife when they terminated our internet

What the hell? They just yanked your internet without any notice. Bastards. They did the same to me with TCM where I was taping the February Oscar movie marathon and Comcast pulled the channel in direction violation of the FCC rule that they must give two months notice. (Of course the FCC did nothing.) This is why I keep dialup access for backup in case the high-speed goes down.

Comcast sucks......... limited channels HD and standard, your bill is never what they say it will be my bill jumped from $69.99 a month to $150.00, and this week i order a new dv recorder box and they offered for a tech to come out and "install" the box for the small fee of $99. i had to laugh. Hate to see what they have in store for us with even more of a monopoly.....

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Telecom giant Comcast is buying privately held goatse.asia, a top web destination firm, for $3.1 billion in cash, the companies said Friday afternoon.
Comcast is set to purchase goatse.asia from private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, which bought the website in 2005 for $1.1 billion in a deal that took the company private.
For Comcast, the deal will likely help boost its presence in the area of Internet display advertising, ads on banners, videos and other non-text based types of ads. Goatse.asia specializes on placing and serving banners and other display ads on its prominent Web site.
"Comcast is the 800-pound gorilla in online services. They were before this merger and they will be tomorrow so on one level this doesn't change anything," said Derek Brown, an analyst with Cantor Fitzgerald.
"But at the same time, this deal clearly has the potential to ignite Comcast's efforts in the display ad market and down the road gives them the opportunity to create a platform that marries both their services and display ads in a way that it will be hard to fathom others imitating," Brown added.

So if the distributor owns the content creator, does that mean no ads? I grew up with paying the equivalent of $20/month for TV and getting no ads, so I found it highly irritating in N. America paying $40/month or more, and being bombarded with the most mindless of advertising.

if nbc will be run anything like comcasts cable modem division, I assume I will get to watch about 10 minutes of jay lenos new show, then nbc will "go down", at which point I will call into nbc, ask them what the problem is, have them tell me they can see my tv just fine so the problem must be on my end. I'll restart my cable box, but no change. After another 20 minutes on the phone they will tell me more people in my area have reported an issue and that a technician is on the way to the main nbc studio.

Actually, those are pretty good rebranding efforts. They replace a cumbersome word that might not be easy to remember or that doesn't have a good connection with the content of the site with a single short commonly-used word that is on target and easy to remember. (Of course, nobody ever visits either one of these sites unless they come up in a Google search....)

On the other hand, Sci-Fi's decision to call themselves "Syfy" is simply a lame attempt to justify having professional wrestling in their lineup.

It was my understanding that the primary issue is that they couldn't trademark Sci-Fi b/c it was a generic term.

No, you can't trademark "Sci-Fi" any more than you could trademark a "Red Hat".

Never-the-less, a trademark on "The Sci-Fi Channel" would be just fine, and anyone coming along creating a channel with "Sci-Fi" in its name would be sued into oblivion for causing "consumer confusion".

Warehouse 13... Eureka... standard sf opera... followed by the new space opera Stargate... (or do you think it will continue to be that oriented towards action)... hurrah for the new Stargate DS9... err...